Tag: Kasper Brohus Allerslev

To be a fan of an evil cleric…

OK, Brennen Reece’s excellent advice on shamelessly including ways for players to indulge their alignment, I’ve considered how to be a fan of evil clerics.

Turns out, it’s really easy. Just have every friggin’ villain or mook ever insult their deity openly. Especially if the mooks / villain is already defeated or surrendered.

Should I or should I not include an indestructible zombie knight in my game tonight?

+1 the posts below to vote.

EDIT: Well, not indestructible indestructible, but very close 😉

If you play in my group, then GO AWAY!

For the rest of you…

Last session, the players looted a sentient skeleton (who nearly killed the fighter). Because I like the random loot table on p. 228, I decided to have the players roll on that one. They rolled a 5, so I decided to give them a “lock of hair” (The Lamented Memento from p. 339).

A question was asked. “How the hell did that skeleton get it?”. The session ended there, giving me ample time to think this through.

This is what I have come up with:

The truth is (unbeknownst to the players) that they have stumbled into a nest of necromancers and a dragon lich. The dragon seeks to restore his true body, and he needs a Tablet of Power (an artifact in our setting) to do so without dying of old age. He performed the ritual to become a lich to postpone his death until he could get his hands on it.

Becoming undead is a vile thing, because your soul actually departs. Technically, you aren’t there anymore. Unless…

Unless you can extort Death (also called “the Reaper” in our setting, because he is the god of souls and the harvest) into returning your soul.

This cult of necromancers have captured the poor girl Miranda, the Reapers one true love, and “not harming her further” is the threat that buys them life eternal.

I guess this’ll give the story an interesting spin.

Wound Moves

Spurred by another conversation about removing HP (and stats in general) from *world games, I started thinking about how wounds could be portrayed as temporary, detrimental moves.

For example;

Broken Arm

Your arm is broken. When you do or experience something that would cause you pain because of your broken arm roll+CON. Take +2 if your arm is somehow stabilized. On a +10 you grit your teeth and pull through. On a 7-9 you still pull through, but your arm is bashed or shaken in the progress. Take 1d4 damage that ignores armor.

I realize this will lead to an unnecessary granularity, and it would probably bog down the flow  of the game and make it unplayable. I thought the thought exercise was nice though, as making the moves forces you to consider how detrimental these kinds of injuries are to a character, helping you to improvise on the fly.

Note the “take +2” bonus; I thought it was nice to include an explicit way to overcome the most gruesome effects.

Thoughts?